The
Never Never
Supported by Fondazione Prada
Installation views | Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof | Photos Fred Dott
Did you know - there are more Porsches in Athens than anywhere else in Europe?
from a phone conversation between the artist and his father
The Never Never was triggered by a piece of fake news. It was produced in Athens by artist Jeremy Hutchison and curator Evelyn Simons, in collaboration with Nova Melancholia - an Athenian performance troupe.
The work comprises film, photographs, collage paintings, performance and sculpture. It launched at the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, before touring to Casino Luxembourg and further European institutions.
In this work, a Porsche 911 is divided into eight parts and worn by Athenian performers. Like hybrids from ancient mythology, these farcical creatures emerge from the sea, navigate a series of epic landscapes before arriving at a photo studio. All this is documented by an advertising film crew, who in turn become actors in the performance.
The Never Never explores contemporary myths: fake news, luxury branding, national stereotypes and global capitalism. It examines how right-wing media used ownership of Porsches to make false and xenophobic allegations about the Greek debt crisis. Indeed, the project's title is slang for debt: it refers to the apparently never-ending number of payments on a loan.
Collapsing incongruous visual languages - from luxury branding, museology, social media and the carnivalesque - The Never Never explores how myths circulate through culture and commercial media. In the process, it embeds itself in those same channels of circulation, albeit as a wrong-headed interloper. Financed by the Prada Foundation, the work hijacks the structure of a commercial shoot - fusing objects and bodies, Athenians and Porsches, ancient myths and marketing myths.
The Never Never has been conceived as an itinerant show. Adopting the spirit of the travelling caravan (a historic tradition within live performance), each chapter functions as a site-specific response to the situation of the gallery; each response bolstering the same ridiculous myth. Through continual repetition, it parrots the rituals of corporate marketing and capitalist spectacle: a touring show that performs the logic of a brand campaign.
The Never Never | Billboard Campaign